It often turns out that carbon dioxide compensation is a joke. “A way to deceive ourselves”

Anyone who books a plane ticket and ticks “CO”.₂“Compensation”, he thinks it works well for the climate. But anti-deforestation initiatives, where these extra dollars usually go, do very little to reduce carbon dioxide₂emissions. For up to 90% of these types of projects, there is no evidence that they compensate for climate damage.

Scholars retract this conclusion in an article Sciences, published Thursday. a company₂Compensation is required. There is now a market for suchcarbon creditsworth about $2 billion. Companies and organizations can buy them to eliminate carbon dioxide emissions, so you can claim your “CO”.₂to be neutral.

However, the promises made by these testimonials are hardly true. The researchers looked at the numbers and assumptions behind 27 forestry projects in six tropical countries. They looked at what would have happened had it not been for the compensation projects. It turns out that the difference is small. “The scenarios that forestry projects use for the future are very pessimistic,” says lead author of the study Thales Bobo West. “They estimate that the risk of deforestation is very high. However, the science behind the scenarios is problematic.

Volunteer projects

Compensation issuers benefit from pessimistic assessments of impending deforestation. Then it seems likely that the reason behind the project is that the trees are still there. This is often not the case. Projects that are clearly successful in combating deforestation also overestimate their impact on this matter. They spend more “carbon credits” than their activities justify.

“It’s a way of fooling ourselves,” says West, who is affiliated with VU University in Amsterdam. “Individuals and organizations are spending money on a climate change strategy that doesn’t work. That money would be better spent on developing clean energy.

The problem is that the carbon dioxide market₂West points out that compensation is still at an early stage. Forest Projects has an official label created by the United Nations called Redd+. this means Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries. The Paris climate agreement encourages its use. But they are not mandatory for states or companies, they are voluntary projects. Project certification is in the hands of a few private parties, and the United Nations does not have the role of strict supervisor. “Our research shows that their methods are not based on good science. There is a lot of room for improvement.”

With research in Sciences Published criticisms of CO₂And the compensation continues. This study looks for the first time at the evolution of forests themselves, the data on that and takes into account the history of deforestation. And earlier this year, other research found that the compensation programs of fossil-drilling companies, such as Shell and BP, had become agitated. It turns out that the forestry projects they are investing in are too vague, or the certificates are too old, which is not really allowed. Three-quarters of these companies’ compensation projects received an unsatisfactory grade, according to this study.

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